Funny Work Stories

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Let's use this thread to vent and let off some steam. Tell us some funny stories that happened to you at work!

Here's one of my favorites. I work at the Walmart call center, taking customer calls.

Me: "Thank you for calling, my name is Adam. [Insert rest of greeting here] How can I help you?"

Customer: "I've been shopping at this Walmart for ten years, and I don't know why they would do something like this to me!"

Me: "I'm very sorry, ma'am. What happened?"

Customer: "My local store stopped selling single serving sizes of Great Value pancake mix, and now they only sell family size!"

Me: "All right, I can send a complaint to the store saying you want the single servings back in stock."

Customer: "Well no, no, it's not that. It's just that I feel like I'm being discriminated against here."

Me: "I'm sorry, discriminated against how?"

Customer: "I feel like they're discriminating against single people! Like, you're only good enough to eat pancakes if you have a family."

What she probably didn't realize is that "discriminate" is a keyword for us. If a customer says they're being discriminated against, the call immediately becomes an ethics problem. Our ethics team usually handles things like racism, sexual discrimination, serious problems like that. That day, however, I got to send them a letter about pancake discrimination. I only hope they got as big a kick out of it as I did.

Worked in an adult novelty store for a minute. Most of my funny stories are from people who are 60+ bragging about accidentally blowing out their partners pacemaker during "activities."

I worked at a public library once - Standing at the receptions desk, you get to meet some funny people. One guy asked for microfilm. I said, "no, libraries stopped using microfilm long ago. At least this library. But if you're looking for old newspaper articles and the like, I can find it in a database for you."
- "A database? On a computer? No thanks. It has to be microfilm" - and he left immediatly.

Another guy would take a seat and talk about ceramics. I politely listened to his long, long story about his big passion in life, and he said he just wrote a book about ceramics. He asked the library to purchase it. I wrote down his name, the name of the book and I actually told my boss about it. Some time later, I saw him on TV, where he was interviewed about his huge ceramics collection.

I worked with a crew that met for coffee-break time and paperwork. The foreman had to call his boss every day, and he'd usually be on hold for five or ten minutes. After a while, he'd start muttering about the delay, working up to some profane variation of "Who does he think he is? Oh, Hi, John!" He never got caught, but he fooled us every time.

My dad worked in an office, and one day a stray cigarette had set a wastepaper basket on fire. It was quickly put out by an improvised cover, but some visitor who had been hanging around kept asking dad for more details on what had happened. Exasperated and wanting to get back to work, Dad tried to shut him off with "It was nothing - happens all the time!" Big mistake. It was the fire inspector!

When I was answering tax questions on the IRS toll free line a guy was upset because he had not received his refund. He had an accent and was hard to understand.

He kept asking for the numbers at our tax return processing sites - can I call Cincinnati etc. Then he started talking about calling Texas. I was curious why he wanted to call there, then it dawned on me and I asked him - do you mean taxes? he said yes whats the matter you cant hear very well.

Another time a guy was upset because he had "saved up" money by not filing to claim refunds for quite a few years. I think the limit on how far you could go back and file for refunds was 3 years or something like that. I had to tell him that it was past the filing limit for multiple years.

Mine was yesterday. I work in the fitting room at Walmart, which for those of you who work there or have been near a fitting room, you probably know the fitting room attendants answer the phone and do announcements (and also work as a gofer between the management and CSMs and customers and other coworkers). Anyways there's been a computer auto generating our schedules, and I've had multiple occasions lately where there was no one scheduled in apparel who could cover my lunch. The fitting room can't be left unattended during our open hours, so someone has to cover it. They pulled a woman from the garden center to cover my lunch, and I gave her a quick run through on what the people who cover need to do (they don't have to do any apparel duties like actual fitting room attendants do, just what I mentioned before and unlocking the doors for customers). I leave and go have lunch with my boyfriend and I get back and she immediately hugs me and says "I've never been more happy to see someone in my entire life."

Honestly this is actually a common response to people who aren't fitting room attendants who cover. Even trained apparel associates can't stand it. The common response "is oh god thank god you're back."

I just found it super amusing because she was so relieved to see me. She did offer to cover my lunches again if I ever needed that when she was there though.

I work as a pharmacy tech and one day I had to phone customer to tell him his gluten free bread has arrived and was ready for collection. I access his records and see some string of numbers in his notes, so I pick up the phone and ring the number.
Suddenly a voice says: "Teletext holidays, how can I help?"
So I ask if I can speak to Mr X, well, he's not there, never worked there...
I put the phone down and go to see the records again and suddenly realize I phoned a product code for gluten free bread and just so it happened it was a number for Teletext Holidays. I sure needed some holiday time...

Oh, one of my favorites are the people who threaten to call the news if they don't get what they want. I would legit pay money to hear that conversation.

Customer: "Stop the presses! I have big news!"

Journalist: "What is it? A terrorist attack? A natural disaster?"

Customer: "No, even worse! Walmart wouldn't give me a refund for this toaster I bought five years ago!"

(*silence*)

Customer: "Isn't that just the most horrible thing you've ever heard?"

(*silence*)

Customer: "I say we shut Walmart down! Who's with me?!"

Journalist: "How stupid can you be?"

Customer: "I want to talk to your manager!"

I used to do extra-odd jobs for a retired lady on the 2nd floor of a condo. She was usually at odds with the condo management, and one of their rules was that you had to have wall-to-wall carpet except in bathroom and kitchen. She had recently bought the unit downstairs from hers for guest space, and decided to put in hardwood for hers. As I was carrying in the oak flooring, one of the management board members came around and told her it was still against the rules. She turned to me and asked if I could install it over the carpet, and savant-quick, I devised a plan and said yes. It made her day, and the floor was delightful - more resilient than usual, like the finest old gymnasiums or dance halls laid on horsehair.

crying at wal-mart

Got a new one for your guys. You know those drones you can buy with the cameras attached to them? Somebody bought one of those, and then promptly got it stuck in a tree. Rather than try to get it down, he brought the remote control and the box back, and expected them to exchange them for a brand new drone. They didn't, of course, and so he called the home office-- and lucky me, I got to take it! Question: how many times do you have to explain to someone that they can't exchange a purchase unless they bring back everything that it came with? Answer: more than seven times. I don't know the exact number, I gave up after that.